I can see clearly now...

For the past week or so, the air quality here has been horrible due to the Oregon wildfires blowing up our way. Our air quality index was in the 150-200+ range for the better part of a week! It bummed us out because we had to cancel our camping trip to Deception Pass that we had booked back in January.

While we stayed in, we found ways to amuse ourselves including FINALLY getting the girls to watch the Star Wars trilogy. I think they were so desperate for screen time they finally relented to Scott's badgering them to watch it. They ended up enjoying it quite a bit and have already been asking us about watching the other episodes. YAY for the small wins during these crazy times, right?

Hazy hazy view of our street

This is the view of downtown Bellevue getting off the 405 exit. This isn't even a mile from downtown!

Scott passed time by brewing beer in our kitchen. This is the disaster that was our kitchen one night.

He had so much weight and water in the sink that it started to leak...

Drying out hops so that he can brew more later.

Finally painting the rocks we got form Seabrook.

Evie's Princess Leia hairdo.

The weather FINALLY cleared up on Sunday after a few days of rain and boy were we happy to head out to the park to breathe in the nice clean air! Here's a few glamour shots I tried to take of the girls. They weren't being very cooperative but some turned out okay!

Her annoyed-at-Mom-for-taking-so-many pictures face

I think she looks like Scott's old baby photos here

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Happy new year!!

Goodness, it's already 2025! It's been a really long time since we posted! We had a very lazy new year. We flew back from LA on the evening of the 31st so spent the last remaining hours of 2024 cozying up on the couch and then fell asleep before it even hit midnight! On New Years day, we slept in, cleaned up the house and then did a quick hike the next day. All in all, a good start to the year! Nora's new blanket hoodie. Cold and muddy trails. We're not in LA anymore! We hiked the Primrose trail that follows Coal Creek.

1 week checkup

We took Nora to her one week check up today and guess what? We have a porker on our hands! She weighed in at a whopping 6 lbs. 5.5 oz. That's 2.5 oz more than her birth weight! They want the baby to be back at birth weight within 2 weeks so she beat that milestone pretty handily. Hooray! So far, she's been better than Evie at eating (she doesn't take nearly as long, although she falls asleep VERY often) but she's not as good as Evie at pooping. Poor thing always seems to have tummy issues - she's very squirmy and fussy when she doesn't burp or poop. The doc doesn't think it's a big problem though since she still has lots of wet diapers, but we'll have to keep a better eye on it now. We'll have another doctor check up (with shots!) next week.

Salmon

The other weekend, Scott arranged for us to get a private tour of the Salmon hatchery on Orcas Island. It's surprising that we've been going to Orcas for over 10 years now and never noticed this place before! The tour started down by the waters along Eastsound where Mike, the facilities manager, showed us where the Salmon come in from the ocean ever year. There is a fish ladder down there and a little dock that lets them catch the spawning salmon and they can quickly fertilize the eggs. Then we drove up to the main hatchery where he walked us through where the eggs incubate until they are little hatchlings before being moved to larger swimming pools. It was an interesting little tour to learn all about the life of the salmon. This hatchery focuses on Chinook (King) salmon, and out of the 800,000 baby salmon they release back to the water, about 800-900 come back to spawn. The rest are eaten up by whales in the Pacific ocean or caught by commercial fisherman out in the open w...

Simpsons in Seattle

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